1936] MAMMALS OF OREGON 69 



In 1888 Merriam saw in a hardware store in Portland a mounted 

 ram, said to have come from the Siskiyou Mountains, and more 

 recently he was told by the Shasta Indians that sheep formerly 

 occurred on the Siskiyou Mountains and also on Goosenest and Bogus 

 Mountains close to the Oregon line. (1921, p. 239.) 



In 1897 the writer was told by settlers that mountain sheep had 

 been numerous in the rocky ridges about Silver Lake in Lake County, 

 but had then almost disappeared. A few were said still to occupy 

 the high ridges northeast of Abert Lake. 



In 1914 Luther J. Goldman made a trip into the Warner Moun- 

 tains to learn if any sheep remained there. He was told by the 

 old inhabitants that at one time sheep had been even more numer- 

 ous than antelope, ranging from 4,500 feet altitude in Warner Val- 

 ley up to the summit of Mount Warner (Hart Mountain on recent 

 maps). Accounts varied as to when they were last seen on this 

 mountain, which seems to have been their last stand in this section. 

 Some reported the last seen as 10 years ago, others as 6 years ago, 

 and one trapper who had wintered near Hart Mountain claimed 

 to have seen two rams only 2 years before (1912). Ranchers of 

 long residence in the country told him that the cause of the exter- 

 mination of mountain sheep was the close grazing of the range by 

 domestic cattle and sheep, which left but scant feed for the wild 

 sheep, which weakened and died of starvation or fell an easy prey 

 to their animal enemies. 



To anyone who has followed closely the history of the disappear- 

 ance of pur mountain sheep, it is clear that they have been destroyed 

 by scabies, the disease commonly known as scab among domestic 

 sheep, wherever infected domestic herds have penetrated the range 

 of the wild species. Like smallpox and measles among the early 

 Indian tribes, scabies swept away whole bands and left only scat- 

 tered bunches that later succumbed to the disease or were finished 

 by hunters or predatory animals. Death was not from starvation, 

 as so often reported, for the wild sheep can always find feed on 

 steep slopes and rough cliffs quite inaccessible to domestic herds. 

 The insidious mites left on the bushes and ground soon become 

 attached to the healthy wild sheep and produced scabby skins, sores, 

 fever, and lingering death. Unfortunately this rimrock sheep of 

 the low country is apparently extinct, but some other form from 

 the same life zones arid Upper Sonoran and Transition could be 

 introduced, and, with proper protection from infected herds as well 

 as from hunting and natural enemies, would doubtless thrive here 

 in its place. 



What more delightful or useful adventure could be imagined than 

 to take a tract of the roughest lava-bed country in eastern Oregon, 

 now idle and worthless, fence a section with inexpensive coyote-proof 

 fencing, 6 feet high, stock it with a ram and a few ewes of some of 

 our native sheep preferably Ovis nelsoni from Nevada, and give these 

 noble and valuable game animals a chance to thrive on this most 

 favorable range? Old Indians, early settlers, and a few big-game 

 hunters have pronounced the mutton of mountain sheep far superior 

 to that of any domestic sheep or of any other game animal of North 

 America. On good range the ewes often raise twins and increase 

 their numbers about as rapidly as domestic sheep. They will live 



